April 1, 2022

The Rec Center #326

Hello everyone! This week we have our latest guest explainer (plus fic recs): Phoebe on The Murderbot Diaries! Plus Elden Ring fanart, articles on Moon Knight and the art of collecting, and more. — Elizabeth

new stuff

“What Was Moon Knight Doing, If Not Getting Money From Dracula?” by James Whitbrook at Gizmodo
In honor of Moon Knight’s TV premiere this week: An explainer on the internet’s most memorable piece of Moon Knight imagery, the meme where he calls Dracula a “big fucking nerd” and yells, “Where’s my goddamn money?”

“How TikTok heartthrob William White’s thirsty fandom turned toxic” by Jessica Lucas at Input
This 22-year-old thirst trap TikToker is literally just some guy, but he’s somehow managed to attract an extraordinarily overzealous and grifty fandom with shockingly little effort. Influencers! Gotta love ’em.

“Questlove: Collecting Is an Act of Devotion, and Creation” by Ahmir Questlove Thompson at the New York Times
“A collection starts as a protest against the passage of time and ends as a celebration of it.” A beautiful essay—in both words and photos—about the act of collecting.

older stuff

“Mishapocalypse” at Fanlore
Today is the 9th anniversary of Tumblr’s Mishapocalypse, a characteristically simple-yet-absurd fandom prank from the Superwholock era.

tumblr & beyond

Elden Ring fanart by chaospyromancy

a unique and very specific review of Mad Max: Fury Road

men will literally go to therapy

have you seen Oluwande’s CROCS in Our Flag Means Death???

Bridgerton in a nutshell.

“i think all fictional couples should be evaluated by how funny an AITA reddit post about their first couple fight would be”

please enjoy this beautiful song

fanfiction + explainer: the murderbot diaries

Phoebe is a fandom old birthed in the fires of LJ when it was still good. She can be found on twitter, tumblr, and her (likely dead until she catches another feeling) fandom podcast. She also created a twitter bot for this book series.

The Murderbot Diaries is a book series written by Martha Wells, and was born in an emotionally fraught certain time in 2016. It’s about a bot/human construct (that hacked itself so it couldn’t be forced to murder anyone) that was created as a Security Unit to provide security for humans doing manual labor for capitalism, but just wants everyone to leave it alone so it can secretly watch futurespace soap operas behind its opaque suit helmet. It definitely doesn’t want anyone to ask it about its feelings. Gross!

Imagine what’s going to happen if Amazon and Elon Musk ever team up? That’s the scifi future this series is set in. But! Despite the capitalistic future with spaceships and a character named Murderbot, it manages to be a series about hope, and people coming together to support each other. In this world that seems just a step away from what we see today, Murderbot encounters a group of people that like it for who it is as a person, and supports its different way of viewing the world. (Literally. Eye contact makes it uncomfortable.)

Ms. Wells writes a world where characters without binary gender are completely normal, where a character that’s uncomfortable with eye contact and touching of any kind is respected, where there are more multiple-partner households than not.

The fandom grown from this is charmingly aro/ace/neurodivergent and the biggest “ship” is the friendship between murderbot and an advanced AI in a spaceship that Murderbot named ART (Asshole Research Transport). The majority of the other ships are various friendships of the crew that Murderbot saves and who befriend it afterward. Murderbot never describes itself, except that it has no gender, and no other character describes it, so fandom has been free to go wild with fanart.

If you’re unsure and want a peek into this world, there’s a free story on Wired that starts before the books. There’s also a delightful animatic, but be warned that does spoil the whole series if you care about that!

(A note on these fic recs: the fandom swings wildly from fluff to exploring the undercurrent of capitalistic horror in the books. My tastes lean toward the former, and my recs reflect that, but if you’re more into horror, boy is there a spot for you, too!)

“The Humans Were Doing Something Stupid” by The_Trouble_Toad. 1.1K words, rated Gen.
Ship: Gen
Backstory: Murderbot’s human friend has human children. Children that of course see a formerly deadly weapon and think it’s super cool because it’s an adult, but has guns in its arms and also shares its downloaded tv with them.
Rec: Murderbot plays hide and seek with children on the farm that its friend lives on, because even though it’s baffled by this human game, it’s also competitive. It’s been waiting in the tree for 27 minutes until a bird decides its presence is a problem. This is a little feel-good fic expanding on the background friendship between Murderbot and the children.
Content warnings: N/A aside from an angry bird (no animals are harmed)

“It’s a Very Distinctive SecUnit” by the_original_n_chan. 2.8K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Gen
Backstory: It’s a half crossover where the Leverage team are in the Murderbot Diaries universe. None of the Murderbot Diaries characters appear.
Rec: Alec and Parker meet Eliot (who is a SecUnit that doesn’t have a governor module), and of course they team up to take down futurespace scifi companies. Also the writer pointing out how short Eliot is could be a callback to Murderbot canon, where it altered its height to be shorter, so it wouldn’t be identified as a SecUnit when it’s out of armor.
Content warnings: Mention of canon where adults sign themselves up (and their kids) for indentured service, and the fuckery that corporations will do to keep them from leaving.

“Closed Systems” by Gilded_Pleasure. 8K words, rated Mature.
Ship: Asshole Research Transport & Murderbot
Backstory: Murderbot is very sex-averse and generally things-humans-do-averse, partially because it doesn’t want to be compared to a human itself. At one point in the books it’s horrified at even the mention it could be in something called a ‘relationship’ with ART (the AI that runs a wholeass spaceship).
Rec: The author does a fabulous job getting these two characters to talk through their feelings. ART wasn’t able to understand the emotional context in the tv its humans watched until it watched tv with Murderbot and was able to read Murderbot’s emotional reactions in the data ART got from it while they watched together. ART uses the example of of a scene in a show where an experienced person guides an inexperienced one through a sexual experience, and of course Murderbot is horrified even though ART doesn’t mean it in an actual sexual way because they’re both robots and don’t even have those parts.
Content warnings: An AI and a human/robot construct discuss emotions in sexual TV scene as a metaphor for their sexless relationship and overall friendship.

“cognitive development” by torpidgilliver. 4.8K words, rated Gen.
Ship: Gen, mentions of Seth/Martyn
Backstory: Seth and Martyn are the “parents” of Asshole Research Transport (the AI spaceship whose real name is Perihelion) and raised it in a family environment with a human “sibling ” Iris. This is Word of God and not actually in the books, but that hasn’t stopped fandom from grabbing that crumb from one interview and running off with it through the fields in glee.
Rec: This is just damn cute as hell. You are sleep deprived from caring for your new baby, then work calls to tell you that your Massive Artificial Intelligence Science Project at work has gained sentience early?? And is sassing the staff?? This author does a good job showing how a brand new baby computer consciousness could try to understand the whole concept of a small human that it’s never seen before.
Content warnings: Brief mention of ableism

“Unacceptable Topics of Conversation” by lick. 4.5K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Gen, Murderbot & SecUnit 3 friendship
Backstory: Three is another SecUnit that Murderbot freed while rescuing humans that were kidnapped. It seems to have been treated better than Murderbot had been, but it was still a slave to a company and has the trauma from that. From what little we see of the character, Three seems to be earnest and genuine. It also has no idea what it wants to do with itself now that it’s free to do whatever it wants.
Rec: This is a quiet SoL where Three and Murderbot bond via Three wanting Murderbot to give it a haircut. I loved how the characters talked about their traumas during the intimacy of a haircut. The two people that can relate to each other’s experiences in a way humans can’t fully understand. Rogue units are rare in the books, and they have to figure out how two rogue units should even act toward each other.
Content warnings: Justifiable criticizing of humans, and discussion of past trauma from being the equivalent of enslaved.

FINAL THOUGHT

Alright folks, have a sweet weekend! — Gav